A musician famously had four albums in top 10 at once until Taylor Swift did it. He’s coming to CT
He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his work at A&M Records, honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, a National Medal of Arts from then President Barack Obama
When the trumpeter performs in concert at Palmer Auditorium in New London on May 21, it may be difficult for younger members of the audience to fathom just how popular he once was.
In the mid-1960s, Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass had four albums in the Billboard top 10, a feat unmatched by any living musician until Taylor Swift did it last year. With movie-star looks and infectious, feel-good melodies, he went on to sell 72 million records and became the only artist in history to score #1 hits as both vocalist (“This Guy’s In Love with You”) and instrumentalist (“Rise”). In 1966, he even outsold a certain quartet from Liverpool. The Beatles may have been more famous than Jesus, as John Lennon once quipped, but they weren’t more famous than Herb Alpert.
Today, still touring at age 89, Alpert looks back at it all with humility and gratitude.
“I’ve been awfully lucky,” he said in a recent interview. “I’ve been at the right place at the right time.”
During his current tour with his wife of 51 years, the singer Lani Hall, Alpert promises to play some of his old hits and “a lot of new stuff as well.” Over a six-day span in May, he will keep up a schedule that would exhaust performers half his age, appearing in Richmond, Virginia; North Bethesda, Maryland; Philadelphia; Nashua, New Hampshire; and New London. After a break, his band will head to upstate New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kentucky in July.
Why does Alpert keep hitting the road when he could be enjoying a relaxing retirement in his oceanfront home in Malibu? “I think I have a bit of a responsibility, selling so many records, and there’s so many people that get enjoyment out of the music I make,” he said. “And I know this sounds odd at my age, but it gives me energy. It’s not like I’m on a victory tour. I’m just looking to have that experience with my band that I like so much.”
Alpert is so preternaturally modest that he doesn’t mention his many other professional and artistic accomplishments: as a songwriter for stars such as Jan and Dean and Sam Cooke in the late ‘50s; as an entrepreneur who founded A&M Records in his garage with partner Jerry Moss in 1962; as a savvy music executive who discovered The Police, Joe Cocker, Cat Stevens, and The Carpenters, among others, and turned his label into the largest independent record company in the world before he and Moss sold it to PolyGram for $500 million in 1989.
And that’s not even counting his talent as an abstract expressionist painter and sculptor whose work has been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. “I’m passionate about what I’m doing,” he said. “I wake up in the morning thinking about music, thinking about painting and sculpting.”
To spread that passion for the arts, Alpert has become a devoted philanthropist. On May 2, the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts celebrated its 30th anniversary by presenting $75,000 grants to 10 “risk-taking, mid-career artists” in dance, film/video, music, theatre and visual arts (overall, 164 artists have been awarded more than $210 million). His Herb Alpert Foundation, meanwhile, has established endowments for music and arts programs at UCLA, CalArts, and the Harlem School of the Arts, among other institutions.
“I think we need our artists,” Alpert said. “They have a very important function in our world but we’re not doing a heck of a lot to encourage artists these days. When I was 8 years old, my grammar school had a music appreciation class and I happened to pick up the trumpet. I’m an introvert and I couldn’t get my thoughts out, but the trumpet did the talking for me. Over the years, it’s obviously changed my life so I always wanted to give back somehow.”
Blessed with good health and a knack for avoiding the addictions that claimed so many of his contemporaries, Alpert is the opposite of the self-destructive artist. He has maintained close relationships with partners such as Moss and songwriter Lou Adler throughout his life. His long marriage to Hall – whom he met in the mid-sixties while his band was touring with her group, Sérgio Mendes & Brasil [unusual spelling] ’66 – is enhanced by their ongoing musical collaborations (they have a daughter, Aria, born in 1976). By any measure, Alpert’s life has been wonderfully well lived.
Yet the whole apparatus almost came crashing down in 1969, when he found that he couldn’t play the trumpet anymore. He was going through a divorce from his first wife, with whom he had two children. “I was rich, I was famous, and I was miserable,” he said. The emotional distress caused him to develop bad habits on the horn. Barely able to play a note, he said, “The trumpet is my enemy.”
At the advice of a musician friend, Alpert sought out Carmine Caruso, a guru for trumpet players. “Man, should I change my mouthpiece or change my trumpet?” Alpert asked him.
“No, the trumpet is just a piece of plumbing,” Caruso replied. “You’re the instrument. The sound comes from deep within you, and the trumpet is just a megaphone.”
For Alpert, it was an “Aha!” moment that changed his life. The trumpet is a notoriously difficult instrument. It does not vibrate to produce a sound, like piano or guitar strings or a saxophone reed. The trumpet player’s lips are what do the vibrating and must be painstakingly trained. Nearly 200 muscles, from the respiratory system to the embouchure, must work seamlessly together. When they don’t, the musician is in trouble. For Alpert, whose life had always revolved around this piece of brass plumbing, it was an existential crisis. And Caruso was a godsend.
“It becomes a lot easier when you understand the process,” Alpert said. “I was so young when I started playing, and then I started doing jobs, and I never thought about how you make the sound and what really happens. So when Carmine explained it, he broke down how the vibrations work, and there’s no difference between moving to a minor second or up an octave. So you look at it from a different angle and it makes a lot of sense.”
During his 5-year hiatus from recording, Alpert finalized his divorce. He married Hall and his newfound domestic harmony inspired him to return to the studio. This year marks the 50th anniversary of Alpert’s comeback album, 1974’s “You Smile – The Song Begins”, produced by Quincy Jones and featuring vocals by Hall.
For Alpert, it was a major inflection point. Instead of being washed up at the age of 39, an outdated ’60s phenomenon, he was back on top with two singles that reached the Billboard Hot 100, including “Last Tango in Paris,” the theme song of the Marlon Brando film that came out that year. A reviewer for Allmusic noted that Alpert had “returned to the studio creatively refreshed, his trumpet sounding more soulful and thoughtful, his ears attuned more than ever to jazz.”
Now that he was back on the scene, Alpert stayed relevant. He scored a #1 hit with 1979’s “Rise,” a funky bass-heavy tune with a catchy melody later sampled by The Notorious B.I.G. for his chart-topping track “Hypnotize.” After spending decades developing A&M Records into an artist-first sanctuary for artists such as Carole King, Peter Frampton, and Janet Jackson, Alpert and Moss sold it for a handsome sum. Meanwhile, he continued making music, venturing into what he called his first “official foray into jazz” in 1992 with “Midnight Sun.”
The ensuing decades brought a steady stream of accolades for Alpert as he became an elder statesman. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his work at A&M Records (2006) and honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (2007), a National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama (2012), and an effusive documentary film, “Herb Alpert Is …” (2020). Meanwhile, he expanded his philanthropic commitments, donating $10.1 million to Los Angeles City College, the largest gift to an individual community college in the history of Southern California.
Today, Alpert’s music remains deeply woven into our cultural fabric, his music heard in movie soundtracks and hundreds of millions of streams on platforms like Spotify and TikTok. His latest album, “50,” is scheduled for release in September. But for this trumpet player, there’s still nothing like a live show. His concerts are informal affairs in which he often invites the audience to ask questions. As he approaches his 90th birthday next year, Alpert said his chops problems are far behind him. “I’m getting up there in age, but man, it’s easier for me to play now than it was 40 years ago.”
Asked how that could be possible, he said the technical aspects of the trumpet, once such a baffling challenge, are by now second nature, allowing him to focus purely on expressing himself. He still practices daily but with no set routine: “I just like to play what I’m feeling at the moment.” Today, to prepare for a concert, he said, “I just look forward to the feeling I get from playing. Not the applause, but the feeling of playing with great musicians. It’s hard to describe for anyone who doesn’t do it. It’s just very special.”
Paul Keegan is a writer based in New York. He has written about jazz for The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Travel & Leisure, and Mother Jones.